


Pressed Flowers

by UsagiSquared



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters (Anime & Manga)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-04 17:37:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18609310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UsagiSquared/pseuds/UsagiSquared
Summary: Magical Day School is funded by the Magical Ministry of Japan. Boarding School isn't, and his old man doesn't exactly have the money for that.But instead of wasting away in a world away from the one that abandoned him, it seems fate has another idea- one that involves ancient artifacts, cards, and something the Magical World won't be able to ignore forever.





	1. Chapter 1

He is fifteen instead of eleven when his world turns on its head, but it is not because magic is real.

Magic was something he knew about far more years ago than that. His first bout of accidental magic occurs when he is 5. He doesn't know why something needs to happen, or how, but his baby sister is spared an untimely death only because he manages to somehow switch their positions.

_He_ ends up with a sprained ankle. For a three year old, it would have been far worse.

His mother is thrilled. His father is confused. And when he's seven years old there is a massive petrel waiting patiently in the parking lot as if it belongs there, his mother handing him a school bag and happily sending him on his way.

The world of magic is a miracle to the eyes of a mundane child.

It is still but another aspect of a human world.

While he spends his days learning magic, garbed in pink and swishing a stick, his family is falling apart. His father didn't know that his mother was a witch- at first it seems like they'll make it work. With every return on the back of the petrel however, the bitterness grows in his father's eyes.

When he's 8, he comes home to see the slow departure of a car from a parking lot, his clumsy feet carrying him down two blocks before he's forced to watch his sister and mother disappear behind a wall of tears. His sister's first bout of accidental magic happened mere weeks ago, causing cherry blossoms to bloom prematurely. Perhaps his mother thought a divorce would protect her.

Perhaps his mother couldn't stand the thought of seeing her ex-husband in her son's eyes.

Primary school is funded by the government. It is free for all students with magic running in their veins, and even mandatory. His grades are average- but with proper study he is told he will do well.

His father doesn't care about such things. With the divorce of his wife, his father doesn't care about anything, not any more.

Primary school is free, but for those who enter into the boarding system significant funds are required. Those who are born to non-magical parents receive a discount based on the number of magical relatives they have access to. Those without parents are covered entirely, just as those who receive the exemplary grades necessary for scholarship.

He fits in neither of these places, because all of the money his father has is spent on either alcohol or futile attempts to cover his debt, and if he even had the funds it is likely he would have held them back out of spite.

It is easy to be a bully, when the world that seemed so wondrous abandons you.

When he turns 11, his time runs thin. By the time 'middle school' is due to start, the headmaster hands him his uniform and wand in a box and tells him 'sorry'. They cannot take him any longer, and if things change they will await his letter by crow or owl. He is reminded of the statute of secrecy at hand, and left with that.

His father gives him a hug for the first time since his parents divorce, and suggests snapping the 'twig' in two so he can show him how to be a 'real man' instead of a child playing make believe.

He finds himself so desperate for the connection that he buys into the idea immediately.

He is not the only one who was handed their wand and uniform.

There are others in the city, others the world left behind, left to wander on the fringes of what is real and what is not as they see what others can't. There is a gang of teenagers who have nothing but the magic in their veins, and the anger of their hearts fueling 'accident' into 'deliberation' and it makes them feel _strong_. And what will a boxed uniform matter when he's pressuring someone for looking at him wrong, with a fist heated by voiceless and wandless charms. What will cheap middle school authority or detection charms matter when they're floating paintball shells with a thought and pilfering sweet loot from the local corner store with a laugh.

It's all fun and games until someone you _like_ gets involved.

When his best friend of middle school nearly gets splinched by the force of someone trying to use apparation against an unwilling target, he takes them and leaves.

The gang wants him back, of course.

He reminds them that he's willing to spend time in a cell if it takes reporting the rest of them in, and the most his old man and friend stand to lose is a few memories in turn.

The bitterness doesn't fade though, and for the longest time he doesn't think it will. High school begins and with it he comes face to face with the same wide eyed innocence he had years ago, the same eagerness and wonder for _dreams_ , for something _else_ , something _mysterious_ and between the gold of his front and the deepend magenta that's only a few shades removed from the pink of his old uniform it churns him inside out.

Bullies are the ones who do things for no good reason he tells himself, and some time later he'll curse himself for it.

He has plenty of good reason to target a kid that needs to learn how the world actually works.

Jonouchi Katsuya's life spun on its head when he was fifteen, after he stole a vital piece of an object that buzzed so angrily in his palm with the unknown, that he tossed it into a pool instead of something worse.

And while he's glad that same buzz of magic chased him back to it, he counts the days until the world that abandoned him tries to swoop down on his friend for simply existing.


	2. Chapter 2

Jonouchi has learned from a very young age, not to talk about what he sees. It takes Honda nearly getting blown up to even convince him to divulge that kind of thing to the other, and even then there is only so much he can explain without coming across as ridiculous. Honda knows that he can do things people _can't_ , that _everyone_ in Hirutani's gang can, and that is almost it.

He knows there is a small family of weasels that Jonouchi occasionally shares meager portions of his lunch with. He knows that sometimes his friend stares a little too long at the sky, when it seems otherwise empty. Jonouchi doesn't explain the details of these things, such as how the weasels could absolutely cleave someone's head off if they wanted, or how every now and then he can see those familiar storm petrels flying across with their precious cargo. He doesn't explain the things that Honda can't see, can never see, because he doesn't know how.

He almost asks if Yugi knows, after that single incident that _he_ can't explain himself.

At first he wonders if it was the grandfather, Sugoroku. The evening after he'd thrown the piece, after Yugi had stood between himself, Honda, and a beating that even magic would have had trouble patching back together, he'd explained Ushio's bargain. The thing Yugi couldn't pay off, that _he_ couldn't pay off for sure, but needed to be dealt with.

Ushio was surrounded by trash and leaves in the morning, acting as if someone had placed him under some sort of illusion charm. Yugi didn't appear to know why. No one else did either for that matter, and Jonouchi found himself waiting the entire morning for _someone_ to appear, for _someone_ to show up waving wands and erasing memories and blaming the only magical culprit possible but they _didn't_.

For a while, he thought maybe it was just that simple.

He told himself that was why he stuck around in any case. Yugi certainly thought that incident made them friends- something about that attitude made it difficult to say no. He told himself he just wanted to know for himself. Find another way to get closer to that world that was always a few hairs apart from him, accessed only in little monsters and shades that no one else could see.

(And they made fun of him, Honda, Yugi, and other friends later on, for his fear of ghosts. They made fun of him and he never had the heart to explain that he knew even from just a few years of magical education that the ghosts in the closet weren't always _fake_ , that sometimes bodies were reanimated into something only fire could stop, and that the creatures in the dark and the disappearances that couldn't be explained _did, in fact, happen_. He didn't explain because they wouldn't see it coming, and a life of obliviousness was better than a life of paranoia)

Sugoroku is not a Wizard however, this much he realizes very quickly. He realizes it from the pulses of _something_ that happen every so often around his new friend, the thing that feels like magic and yet _isn't_ , the thing that sends shivers up his spine for no reason.

He is not the only one who realizes something is _There_ , and Hirutani jumps at it like an opportunistic ape who has waited for someone to turn around.

Because Jonouchi cannot explain Yugi but he doesn't wish him harm either. He doesn't want to lose what he has, what he's building, even as he slowly realizes that the 'magic that isn't magic' comes from _him_.

Because as Hirutani tells him, the threat that Jonouchi made ages ago cannot apply if Jonouchi wants to keep the Ministry away from Yugi as well.

He allows himself that fear, just then.

Allows himself to believe that Hirutani could be anything less than a coward, could be anything desperate enough to throw _himself_ under a bus to bring Jonouchi and some 'poor nonmagical boy' down into the ground with him.

But Hirutani is a coward, and it doesn't take long to figure that out again. It was the reason his initial threat stuck to begin with, after all.

The magic that isn't magic is never explained, only made more confusing. It makes Jonouchi wonder if the ministry even Can get involved, or if they even _know_ something is happening. When foreign 'non-magical' sorts turn out to wield the same power, and stronger. When public faces in the business world broadcast games with life threatening stakes, for all the world to see.

He can't understand it, and he doesn't.

And he still doesn't know if he can talk about it, not even with this 'Other Yugi' residing within his new friend. Because Yugi never approaches him about it himself. Yugi never looks to the air to squint at impossibly sized birds, never pauses at little shrines along the road because there are _things_ waiting there, and it only takes one wrong move to become one of those 'unexplained disappearances'.

He never seems to have more than an uneasy feeling where Jonouchi finds himself grappling with the cold fear that comes with _visibility_ , and so he keeps his mouth shut.

He knows better after all.

Honda does not, and Honda is smarter than Jonouchi gives him credit for. Honda knows that Jonouchi doesn't stare at _nothing_ when he looks to the sky with bitter remembrance, he knows that Jonouchi isn't feeding weasels and ravens because he can spare the food, he knows that when Jonouchi glances over his shoulder with narrowed eyes there is something _there_.

So when Jonouchi goes missing _again_ , for _too long_ , he doesn't just find Yugi.

He talks to him.

A few broken yo-yos, some angry weasels, a dead man and a crying friend later, and Jonouchi has probably given Honda a black eye but Honda's grin tells the 'normal' one of the group it was worth it. And Yugi is stubbornly telling his best friend off for being hypocritical (because honestly what did he think was going to happen, that he would hate him? that he wouldn't understand? And Jonouchi holds his tongue because he knows better than that, even if holding his tongue got him here to begin with), Anzu is being filled in (because she's the only one left who doesn't know and that's not fair, Yugi insists, they can't just all know and not tell her anything when she's been wrapped up in their nonsense too), and by the end of it all Yugi finally asks something that Honda never has.

Because Honda knows better, but not enough to tell him the one thing that should never be questioned.

If Jonouchi is a wizard, why is he _here_.

Magic is supposed to be a wondrous, fantastic thing, but when society and human greed is thrown into the mix, that goes out the window very fast. It's a lesson Honda didn't need to be given, a lesson that made sense enough that he was able to draw his own conclusions, but it's a lesson that Yugi is left to realize in the half second it takes to see his best friend's face. And he cannot take the words back, but he can at least say one thing more.

_'...Thank you, for being my friend anyway.'_

He means the words with all his heart-

And quietly Jonouchi asks if Yugi wants to see him make a tin can float.


End file.
